Цирцея

In 1885 the London art world was full of scenes from Greek myth, and John Collier sent this one to the Royal Academy. It shows Circe, the enchantress of Homer's Odyssey who turned the crew of Odysseus into swine and lions. Collier gives her to us from behind, nude and calm, with real predators around her, a tiger and a spotted ocelot at her sides, a puma and boars in the wood beyond. The point is that she is entirely unafraid of them, because in the story these beasts were once men she had transformed. Collier had trained partly in Paris and Munich and admired the Pre-Raphaelites, and you can see it in the careful, glossy finish. The painting is today in a private collection.